Taylor Swift fans have flooded Joe Alwyn with hate ahead of the release of The Tortured Poets Department

In five days Taylor Swift will release her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department and to say anticipation is running high is an understatement.

The Tortured Poets Department is expected to sell around two million copies in the first week alone and is set to become the first album to sell over one million vinyl copies in its first week since Michael Jackson’s Bad in 1987.

Around the globe Swifties have set their clocks, booked their leave (yes really), organised listening parties or bought tickets to launch parties hosted by savy venues, quick to cash in on Swiftmania.

The album will feature 20 new songs for fans to pour over, analyse and embrace as the new soundtrack to their own lives.

But along with the wave of interest from fans who simply love Swift’s music, is another more sinister parasocial obsession with the singer’s personal life that views it as the visual accompaniment to her songs.

To be fair, Swift has fostered some of that intense interest and it serves her well.

Over the course of her 18 year career, the global pop phenomenon has also gone out of her way to bring her fans into her life with her “you guys” conversational way of addressing them and private listening parties she’s thrown in the past, inviting along her most loyal and committed fans and baking them cookies.

While devoted Swifties put her relationship with her fans down to her good nature they’d be foolish not to see that Swift has practically re-written the rule book when it comes to marketing her brand.

It works to her advantage that her songs, more often than not addressing romance and heartbreak, are personal and relatable yet generic enough that they can be applied to her fans’ own lives.

It also works in her favour that they like to speculate about what aspects of her life have influenced which songs.

When her fans obsess over her lyrics, looking for signs of which famous ex she is referring to in each song, it sparks the kind of forensic interest that results not just in repeat listens but constant listens, racking up millions of dollars in streaming revenue and thousands of hours of free publicity on X and Tik Tok where megafans spout theories about everything Swift-related.

It also doesn’t hurt that her life practically plays out like a movie, she the stunning statuesque central character, a self-made billionaire living a glitzy and glamourous, jet-setting life with a bevy of A list pals and matinee idol boyfriends.

In the past year, on the back of the world-record breaking success of her billion-dollar grossing Eras Tour, Swift’s fame has sky-rocketed, eclipsing anything even she has previously experienced.

And after a extremely low-key relationship with her previous partner British actor Joe Alwyn, whom she dated for six years until April 2023, she is enjoying being back in the spotlight.

Following a short-lived dalliance with Matty Healy, singer for the UK rock band The 1975, she is now in a high-profile romance with Travis Kelce, a dual-Superbowl winning NFL star with Kansas City Chiefs.

But despite being happy with a new partner, she has so far done little to quell her fans building animosity towards Alwyn.

Even before The Tortured Poets Department hit the shelves or streaming sites, some Swifties were taking up their virtual pitchforks and pointing they squarely at the British star. Hashtags like #Joeover have been trending on and off ahead of the release of TTPD. While anyone daring to defend Alwyn is dismissed as a “Joe Widow”.

The situation escalated last weekend when footage of Alwyn allegedly moaning the name Alison while filing the series Conversations with Friends with Irish actor Alison Oliver, rather than using her character’s name Frances, had the parasocial Swifties enraged that he potentially cheated on his superstar former girlfriend.

Within hours Oliver had turned off her Instagram comments after the baying mob started leaving nasty comments under a post of a promotional shoot she did with Alwyn for Elle magazine. All despite there being no actual evidence or confirmation that the pair ever had an intimate relationship.

Alwyn had already been dealing with his fair share of hatred when, after releasing her tenth album, Midnights in October 2022, Swift went on to drop two additional songs which seemingly addressed their split, Hits Different and You’re Losing Me. Both led Swifties to begin casting Alwyn as the villain of the relationship.

In You’re Losing Me they read the line: “I wouldn’t marry me either, a pathological people pleaser, who only wanted you to see her” as evidence that Alwyn was indifferent to Swift and her vision for their future.

In another Midnights track, Bejewled, they construed the lyrics: “Don’t put me in the basement when I want the penthouse of your life” to indicate that Alwyn was someone who didn’t appreciate his girlfriend or put her first.

And later in the same track they took the line: “Best believe I’m still bejeweled, when I walk in the room, I can still make the whole place shimmer” to suggest the B grade actor was jealous of his girlfriend’s talent and allure.

Critics and fans of Swift, who’ve seen this behaviour before when angry Swifties launched online attacks on her previous ex-boyfriends including Jake Gyllenhaal, John Mayer and Healy, are waiting to see if the singer will step in to try and rein in the wayward Swifties ahead of or following the release of The Tortured Poets Department.

For those who dismiss the memes, hashtags and abuse as online chatter or shenanigans that only stem from a small sector of the fanbase, it is worth noting that both Gyllenhaal and Mayer have spoken out about the impact the bullying has had on them.

In an interview with Esquire Gyllenhaal, who had to turn off his Instagram comments after Swift re-released the beloved fan favourite All Too Well, reportedly written about him, said celebrities should not allow “unruly” fans to “cyberbully in one’s name” without directly referencing Swift.

The irony around Swift’s general silence when it comes to calling out online bullying is that it seems to be in direct contradiction of the harmonious, inclusive atmosphere she fosters among her fans and at her live shows. And indeed, the very values upon which her brand is based.

Australian fans who attended the Eras Tour in Melbourne or Sydney were unanimous in their praise of how positive, warm and welcoming fans at the shows were. How kind everyone was — trading friendship bracelets and singing along with people who were until that point complete strangers.

In the New Yorker, Amanda Petrusich also pointed out that the “swarm and bully tactics” of some fans feels distinctly “at odds with Swift’s music, which has always championed the misunderstood, the overly sensitive, the underdog.”

For those who might suggest Swift could be unaware of the Alwyn-targeted hate it pays to bear in mind that she is one of the world’s most famous women and likely the most hyper-managed celebrity on the planet. There is nothing her team is not across.

In a rare break from her usual silence towards her fans’ online activities, it should be noted Swift did speak out ahead of the re-release of her album Speak Now in July last year warning fans about their online behaviour.

At an Eras Tour stop in Minneapolis, she took time out before playing the song Dear John, which is widely thought to be about Mayer, whom she dated when she was 19 and he was 32, to praise the positive fan interactions she was witnessing at her concerts and urging fans to continue that behaviour online.

“I would love for that kindness and that gentleness to extend to our internet activities,” she said at the time. “I’m 33 years old. I don’t care about anything that happened to me when I was 19 years old. I’m not putting this album out so you feel the need to defend me on the internet from someone you think I wrote that song about 14 billion years ago.”

But as yet there has been no comment forthcoming about The Tortured Poets Department the hate Alwyn and Oliver have received.

Interestingly, within two days of releasing her seventh studio album Eternal Sunshine on March 8 this year, Ariana Grande felt the need to caution her fans against online bullying. The album is thought to address the breakdown of her relationship with her former husband, Dalton Gomez.

Posting to her Instagram story Grande wrote: “I just wanted to say anyone that is sending hateful messages to the people in my life based on your interpretation of this album is not supporting me and is absolutely doing the polar opposite of what I would ever encourage (and is also entirely misinterpreting the intention behind the music),” she wrote. “I ask that you please do not. It is not how to support me. It is the opposite. Although this album captures a lot of painful moments, it also is woven together with a through line of deep, sincere love. If you cannot hear that, please listen more closely.”

Swift has had her own experiences with online bullying and being “cancelled”, when she disappeared from view for a year in 2016 following very public feuds with likes of Katy Perry, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian and ex-boyfriend Calvin Harris that led to the #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty becoming the No. 1 global trend on Twitter and saw her Instagram feed flooded with snakes emojis. Her comment section has remained off ever since.

When Swift returned from her year of self-imposed exile, which coincidentally started when her relationship with Alwyn began, she did so with the triumphant 2017 comeback album Reptutation. It was launched with no media fanfare and the simple tagline: “there will be no explanation, only Reptuation”.

So given her own experiences and the ethos of love and acceptance she markets as her brand, does Swift have an obligation to rein in the fans who are participating in the hate?

The answer is obvious, she does and she should because online bullying to the degree Alwyn is experiencing can have very real world consequences.

In the interest of protecting an image Swift has worked so hard to cultivate as an icon her fans can admire and look up to, it is the right and responsible thing to do.

If Swift chooses to say nothing, she could be opening herself up to criticism that she’s simply pedalling a narrative of kindness while turning a blind eye to on-going abuse that she has at least some power to contain.

Staying silent could potentially damage her popularity and reputation among critics and more casual fans. But, more worryingly, it could at an extreme cost to someone she’s written scores of love songs for and with (Alwyn has been credited as a songwriter on several songs songs across her past three albums, Folklore, Evermore and Midnights, under the pseudonym William Bowery.) Love songs that even the fans who are now attacking Alwyn, have undoubtedly listened to over and over, songs that have helped make Taylor Swift one of the biggest music superstars the world has ever seen.

One thing is certain, the world will be watching Swift’s next move, as it always does. And for someone rewriting history with her story, she’d be wise to remain on the right side of it.